


A Demon's Fate, An Angel's Sin

by BleedingInk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angst, Angst and Porn, Betrayed Meg Masters, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Masturbation, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, survival pact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:10:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingInk/pseuds/BleedingInk
Summary: Looking for the Colt and a clue about Lucifer's whereabouts, Dean and Castiel find an injured Meg instead. They decide to interrogate her, but Meg apparently has neither information nor any particular interest in survivng this ordeal. Dean tasks Castiel to get her to open up, but it's Castiel who ends up unexpectedly attached to this demon who might be the only one who understands what it was like for him to lose everything he once fought for.





	A Demon's Fate, An Angel's Sin

**Author's Note:**

> Created for [a-winchester-fairytale's](http://a-winchester-fairytale.tumblr.com/) writing challenge and inspired by my friend's Amanda awesome cosplay of scarred ApocaMeg. Hope you enjoy it!

They found her instead of the Colt.

The smell of blood and brimstone impregnated the air as soon as they cut the chain that was keeping the old warehouse’s door locked and ventured inside. Some of the new ones, the least experienced ones, the ones who hadn’t had time to grow used to the horrors of their new world, covered their mouths and noses with their sleeves. Dean and Castiel moved first, as they always did. They had to lead by example, after all. The pools of something liquid on the floor splashed their boots when they stepped inside.

The scene their flashlights illuminated was gruesome enough to match the reek. There were at least a dozen dead bodies in the warehouse. Well, at least in Castiel’s rough estimate: some of them had been dismembered, some have been eviscerated to the point they barely resembled anything human. The pools on the floor were deep red to the point they looked black, and on the parts that weren’t covered in it, there were scratches and nails as if the victims had been brutally dragged around before their deaths.

“Holy shit,” one of the men muttered. Castiel thought his name was Travers. “Did Croats do this?”

Dean approached one of the bodies that seemed more complete than the others and kicked it. The head rolled away from the neck, revealing a face contorted forever in a scream of horror and two burnt black holes where its eyes had been.

“Lucifer,” he said. “These were all demons.”

It wasn’t hard to tell how he had come to that conclusion. The smell alone was enough of a giveaway, but there was no other creatures on earth that could cause injures like that. Lucifer was the only angel left on earth.

Well, him and Castiel. But Castiel wasn’t much of an angel anymore.

“He knew we were on his trail,” Castiel deduced. “He arranged for us to find this.”

Dean cursed under his breath. Lucifer was mocking them. He was long gone, along with the Colt and whatever else he kept in that warehouse that they could use to fight him.

“Search them,” he ordered his party.

“I don’t think we’re going to find any supplies here…”

“Anything can be of help,” Dean said, shutting up the protester with a glare. “Anything can be a clue. So I don’t really care if you’re not in the mood to get your hands dirty, princesses. You’re going to search them, you hear me?”

Another one of the men (Max or Mac, something along those lines) leaned over and vomited noisily. The rest of the party ignored him, only walking away from him with disgusted gestures. Dean huffed as if that turn of events was very inconvenient.

“You stay outside,” he told him. “Shoot at anything that moves and scream if you see any Croats.”

Mac looked relieved that he didn’t have to rummage through the carnage. As he walked away, Castiel started surrounding the corpses, his eyes searching for anything out of the ordinary. He wasn’t an angel any longer, but he still knew to look for patterns that would be occult to the humans, signs that could give them an indication of what could be their next move.

There was no much to find here, though. Lucifer seemed to have tried to be as brutal as possible just to prove to them that they stood no chance against his power. Though why he would be this cruel towards his followers and servants, towards his own creations, was something that escaped Castiel. He was like a child that destroyed the toys that bored him, tossing them aside once they were no longer useful…

A shadow moved out in the corner of his eye and Castiel stood up, his weapon drawn and ready. It hadn’t been one of the others, he had walked further into the warehouse than anyone else. What was in there with him? Had Lucifer set a trap for them after all?

It turned out that he had left something behind, but it wasn’t anything that Castiel imagined.

The shadow moved again and this time, he saw it clearly. It was black, thick smoke, spiraling out from among a pile of bodies, trying to reach for the ceiling, but without getting too far away. The column soon disappeared back from where it came, as if it had been sucked down. Still with his weapon ready, Castiel approached the bodies and started separated them, taking quick looks at them only to make sure they were as dead as they had been a moment before. Their meat was still cold and sticky and soon his hands were too, stained red and slippery as he separated limbs and skin as delicately as he could. Their heads fell back limply, showing no signs of life. Perhaps he had imagined the smoke…?

His hand came upon an arm that was still warm. Castiel held his flashlight up as he pulled from it. It was a dark-haired woman, stripped from her clothes and from any semblance of life. Yet, her body was still barely warm, as if her death had come about only recently. While Castiel was trying to determine what to make of it, her eyes opened up: they were pitch black and dead. He jumped back, his finger already on the trigger even though he knew the bullet wouldn’t kill the surviving demon. But maybe it would be enough to delay it before it could attack them…

The demon didn’t seem interest in attacking anyone. It didn’t even have the strength to leave its own body: as Castiel watched it closely, its jaws unhinged and the same dark smoke he had seen before started pouring out… only to be sucked back in a few seconds later. The body it was possessing shook and remained motionless. Blinking with surprise, Castiel approached it again.

“You’re trapped,” he deduced. “He did something to trap you in this body, didn’t he?”

The demon didn’t react or answered to him. The spell that bound it to that body also seem to weaken it, to make it feel all the injuries it had sustained without the possibility of healing itself. Or maybe the hurt had been inflicted in a special manner. Lucifer was definitely sadistic enough to come up with something like that.

In any case, the demon was too damaged to do anything other than uselessly trying to escape its meatsuit. Castiel stood over it, wondering what could be his next step. One quick slice of Ruby’s knife would be enough to put it out of its misery. Or maybe Dean would want to interrogate it, get a better sense of what had happened in that warehouse and where Lucifer was headed now. Castiel doubted a simple black-eyed demon that had been left for the slaughter would have that kind of intel, but it never hurt to ask.

Well, maybe it would hurt it, but Castiel didn’t feel exactly inclined to pity demons.

He passed an arm behind its neck and the other behind its knees to pick it up. The woman’s body was tiny and it felt frail in his hands, so it wasn’t hard to move with it back to where the group was already gathering.

“We found nothing,” Patrick (Castiel was almost sure his name was Patrick) was informing Dean. “They’re all dead.”

“Except for this one,” Castiel intervened.

Dean turned around and his flashlight pointed at the woman’s face. Her eyes were open again, just as dark as before, but she gave no signs of being aware that she was being observed. Dean’s face, however, did change: his eyes grew wider and his mouth hanged opened in surprise.

“I’ll be damned!” he said, approaching Castiel to take a closer look. “Meg?”

“You know her?”

“Yeah. That bitch and I go way back,” Dean replied.

Castiel could tell he was following the same reasoning he had. His hand moved to his waistband, to the place where Castiel knew he kept the knife, but at the last second, he hesitated and dropped it.

“Load her up in the trunk,” he instructed Castiel. “She might have something to say when she wakes up.”

Castiel doubted it would be telling them anything useful, but he did as Dean ordered. The trunk’s interior was covered in Devil’s traps and spells that would make it impossible for the demon to escape. In any case, it didn’t look like she was strong enough to do it. Her eyes were still open, staring unblinkingly ahead. Had it not been for them, it would almost look like a human, a fragile woman covered in bruises, cuts and dried blood.

And even though he knew it wasn’t true and that it was very unlikely that the demon was cold, he still put a blanket over her body before he closed the trunk.

 

* * *

 

Human needs bothered him greatly. They were small and he understood it was better if he took care of them, but Castiel struggled with them every day. Urinating and defecating were by far the worst. He didn’t think he would be able to ever truly get used to it. But even things that weren’t meant to be unpleasant turned into a hassle to him. The fact he didn’t find the food to be particularly enjoyable was apparently normal, for everyone else in the camp complained about it as well, but no one else shared his plight about sleeping. Just lying motionless for hours on end, staring at the ceiling of his cabin until unconsciousness overtook him… how did the others manage to do it every night? How did the rest just closed their eyes and stayed asleep? It was a mystery to him.

The worst part was that, when he did manage to sleep, he had horrible nightmares. Nightmares of abandoned cities and human being running amok killing the people that up until that day had been their friends, their family. Nightmares of his own kind, either dying in a flash of white light or leaving him behind upon realizing the battle was lost. Nightmares of his own life ending amidst violence and screams, of his own body broken, rotting on the ground of what would soon become a desolated wasteland, a twisted shadow of what once was his Father’s greatest creation.

In moments like that, he didn’t mind that Dean could sneak up in his cabin at any time, shake him by the shoulder and bring him back from his terrible dreams to a reality that, while not pleasant, still much better in comparison.

“I’m going to interrogate Meg,” he informed him.

“Very well,” Castiel mumbled, the last dark images fleeing from his mind as he tried to accommodate back into his consciousness.

“I want you to come with me.”

That took him by surprise. He knew what the “interrogation” would be like, and Dean knew that Castiel disapproved of such practices. He turned a blind eye on them, but he found it unsavory that Dean was using what he had learned in Hell to get information on Lucifer.

“Why?” Castiel asked. He rolled over and sat up.

“I need someone to play good cop,” Dean explained. “Whatever happened in that warehouse, we know Lucifer did it and we know Meg almost died for it. I need someone to try to convince her we’re not going to kill her if she cooperates.”

“But that’s a lie.”

Dean didn’t even attempt to deny it.

“Are you coming or not?”

Castiel gritted his teeth and rubbed his eyes. After all, lying to a demon wasn’t the worst thing Dean had asked him to do.

“Yes. Give me a moment, please.”

Dean told him to hurry up and went to wait for him outside. Castiel knew he shouldn’t waste the clean water, but he still knelt next to his cube and splashed his face with it. He took a quick glance at the door to make sure Dean wasn’t looking his way and slowly lifted up the tile behind the cube.

It had taken him some time to build up his stash, many raids on abandoned hospitals and some stealing from the infirmary. Not enough that it would be noticeable and at irregular intervals, so the theft could be attributed to different people in the camp. Half of them were already junkies anyway, using the drugs to mitigate the despair of knowing that they were living in a world that was on its last leg. During the first months, suicides were common enough that they had to keep the armory locked so no one could get their hands on a gun when they weren’t going on a mission, but Castiel knew there were other ways to kill oneself.

He opened one of the orange bottles and extracted a single pill. He didn’t like taking them too often because he didn’t want to build a resistance to them, but in cases like this, they were necessary. He needed to dull his senses just enough that he wouldn’t care for what he and Dean were about to do. He dry-swallowed the pill and grabbed his jacket on the way to the door.

The “interrogation” room was what once had been the camp’s showers. Since there was no longer running water, they had been repurposed so Dean could hold the demons in a relative secluded building, away from the rest of the survivors. It was locked with a pad and Dean kept the only copy of the key. It was early in the morning when they headed there: the dawn’s grey light gave the camp’s cabins an eerie, surreal look. The silence was so great that the sound of their boots on the gravel was almost a deafening echo. Nobody would wake up or move until an hour or two later.

If they weren’t woken by Meg’s screams first.

Dean closed the door behind them. There was a row of broken sinks on one wall and closed shower stalls on the other. As far as Castiel knew, Meg was the only demon currently in the camp, but Dean didn’t always find it necessary to tell him about his activities.

She ( _it_ ) was in the middle of a Devil’s trap on the floor on one of the furthest stalls, in a fetal position with one of her hands stretched out as if she was waiting for someone to grab it. She was still naked and the dry blood formed black crusts on her face and her body. Her black eyes remained unnaturally open, fixed on a spot on the wall.

“You could have at least given her some clothes,” Castiel groaned as he looked away.

“Why?”

It was a good question. After so many years under the demon’s possession, it was unlikely that the soul that originally inhabited that body was still in there. For all intends and purposes, that body now belonged to Meg.

At least, he figured that was what Dean was telling himself as he rolled the cart with his interrogation tools. He didn’t choose any of the scalpels or saws he had there, just Ruby’s knife and a flask that contained holy water. Castiel stood back while Dean unscrewed the lid and crouched near Meg’s body.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said, spraying her with it.

Meg gasped in pain as her skin let out white smoke from the places where the water had touched her. For the first time in probably hours, she moved, sitting up and flinching as she scurried as far away from them as the Devil’s trap allowed her to. The black in her eyes slowly disappeared until they became white and brown, human eyes wide open in terror as she observed her captors.

The fear on her face vanished as quickly as it’d showed up. She twisted her mouth like she was annoyed and groaned.

“Oh, great. Just what I needed.”

“Hello, there, bitch,” Dean told her. His smile was more a threatening snarl. “Long time no see.”

“I would say I’m elated, Dean-o, but I just had a really long couple of days,” Meg replied. She sounded confident and calm, not at all as if she was a prisoner in the hands of who had to be her worst enemy. “So why don’t we just skip the foreplay and you kill me already?”

“Oh, we’ll get there,” Dean replied. “But first, I’m gonna ask you some questions…”

“I don’t know where the stupid gun is,” Meg interrupted him. “I don’t know where Lucifer is going next. I have no information whatsoever that would be useful to you, so torturing me will be a waste of both our times. Are those answers enough for you?”

Dean stared at her, obviously at a loss for what to say next. She stuck her chin up in the air, defiant. Castiel supposed he shouldn’t admire her for the fact that she was naked, weaponless and trapped by her enemies and still managed to keep her composure. But a part of him did, a little bit.

“Yeah, no. Not good enough,” Dean decided in the end. He toyed with the knife in his fingers. “You’re gonna tell me the truth or I’m gonna start slicing…”

“I _am_ telling the truth,” Meg snapped. There was something almost angry, almost desperate in her voice. But she calmed down a second later and added: “But suit yourself. It’s a host body. Some girl from Cheboygan, ran away to be an actress. Not the worst thing that’s happened to her, trust me.”

That gave Dean some pause.

“So what? You’re just gonna roll over and take it?” he asked, frowning. “That’s not your style, Meg.”

“And torturing demons to death for information they don’t have isn’t yours, but here we are,” Meg replied. She brought her knees to her chest and hugged them with her arms, looking even more fragile as she did so. “So put up or leave me alone. Since I can’t leave this body I might as well try to repair it a bit before you break it again.”

That explained her previous apathetic state. The demon had retreated inside and concentrated all her power in healing the wounds she had received. But even now, that didn’t seem to be sufficient: her hair was bushy and tangled with what was likely dried blood, and there were scarlet wounds everywhere, especially in her face. It looked like someone had been trying to scratch her eyes out, leaving a long mark that descended from her eyebrow to her cheek and even down to her neck. Her lip was cut and there were bruises on her abdomen and legs that revealed a more extended internal damage.

Whatever had happened to her, it was probably much, much worse than anything Dean could come up with.

And she was sitting there, staring at them both, daring them to kill her because…

“You _want_ to die,” Castiel guessed.

Meg’s big brown eyes fixed on him with a mixture of terror and shame right before she smirked at him. It was so fast Castiel wasn’t sure if he had imagined it.

“Look, it speaks!” she said. “And here I thought you’d come here just to see the show.”

“Why would I enjoy watching someone be tortured?”

Meg threw her head back and let out a long laughter.

“The end of the world, baby,” she reminded him. “All sorts of freaks and weirdos roaming God’s green earth. But I’m guessing you knew that.”

Castiel didn’t know what to answer to that, so he said nothing. Dean was studying Meg closely, like he was trying to find a crack in her shield. Meg, in turn, was analyzing him.

“You’re not a normal human,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I mean, not like the others I had seen so far. What’s wrong with you?”

“That’s a very complicated question,” Castiel said, before catching himself. Of course, the demon wouldn’t want to hear about his fall and why he wasn’t, and likely would never be, just another human.

Dean tapped his fingers in his knee, as if he was reflecting.

“Well, clearly, you’re not in a sharing mood,” he concluded. “So maybe I’ll come back later and we’ll continue this little chat.”

“Didn’t you hear me the first time?” Meg huffed. “I know nothing!”

“Yes, so you say.” Dean stood up and put away the knife. “But we’ll see if that’s true. Let’s roll, Cas.”

He headed for the door, leaving Meg still naked and vulnerable in her trap. Before he closed the door, Castiel looked over his shoulder: Meg had returned to her previous position, unmoving and with her eyes turned again into two bottomless pits.

“Why didn’t you insist?” Castiel asked once Dean had locked the door again.

“I would’ve got nothing,” Dean explained. “If I tried to step on the trap, she would have attacked me and I would’ve had to kill her. And according to you, that’s exactly what she wants.”

“Then why not do it?”

“Because we don’t give demons what they want, Cas,” Dean replied, glaring at him with irritation, as if he thought the former angel was asking him those questions to annoy him somehow. “She’s up to something. I know she is. And until we find out exactly what…”

“How do you intend to do that if you’re not able to torture her?”

Dean walked away without answering him, so Castiel had to hurry up to follow him. He was deep in thought, as if devising a strategy, and Castiel tried not to interrupt him until they were back in his cabin.

“I guess that’s where good cop comes in,” he said, looking at him. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but the way his mouth twisted made Castiel think that he was satisfied. “She won’t answer to threats or torture. So she might answer to kindness.”

Castiel tilted his head, confused, and waited for Dean to continue.

“In hell, sometimes…” Dean breathed in deeply and spoke again, but it sounded like he had a hard time finding the words. “Sometimes demons can take the form of someone you care about. Your family or your friends or whatever. And them being nice to you after you’ve been through so much shit will convince you to do anything.”

Castiel tried to ignore the heaviness of what Dean was confessing and went straight to the heart of that strategy.

“I’m not someone Meg cares about.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean shrugged. “We might be able to change that.”

Castiel didn’t like this plan any better, but he couldn’t find the words to oppose it. No, that wasn’t true: he didn’t even try to oppose it, because what difference did it make in the end? A demon’s fate, an angel’s sin, wouldn’t change the long path to extinction in front of them. Humanity and everything it had been was already doomed. And he knew Dean was well aware of that.

But he needed to do one last thing before their time was up, and Castiel had to help him.

The following day, Castiel went to Meg’s stall alone. She was still sitting with her knees to her chest, as if she hadn’t moved in the long hours when he and Dean had forgotten about her. It was very likely that she hadn’t, of course, but if she was focusing her power on trying to repair her damaged body, it didn’t look like it was making much difference: her wounds had healed, but the white marks on her skin remained the same. Castiel wondered if she was able to erase them at all.

He cleared his throat, but the demon ignored him. She only moved her head when he leaned over and placed the bundle of clothes inside the Devil’s trap. But she didn’t try to attack him, instead letting her eyes recover their more human appearance.

“What’s that?”

“They’re for you to wear,” Castiel explained, as if it was really necessary.

Meg’s lips twisted in a smirk, as if what Castiel had just said was incredibly funny. Slowly, she placed her hands to the sides and stood up.

“I’m not exactly cold in here,” she commented.

Castiel hadn’t had time to observe her before, and even now he felt the impulse to look away. He would have if he didn’t know that Meg was explicitly trying to make him uncomfortable. He was an angel, or he had been. He was supposed to be above the very human impulses that made it uncomfortable to be standing in front of a naked woman.

His eyes still roamed her body, almost involuntarily. Meg… no, the woman whose body Meg was using, had a very small frame, a flat stomach, small breasts with rose nipples and a small bush of dark thin hair between her long legs. She obviously hadn’t chosen it for its physical prowess or its capacity for intimidation. No, this was a body chosen to deceive, to seduce.

Exactly the same thing Castiel was trying to do to her.

“See anything you like?” she asked. Her voice was a smoky purr and finally managed what her shamelessness hadn’t before. Castiel fixed his eyes on her face… or maybe a few inches above her head, because her face, despite the scars that now covered it, was also that of a very beautiful woman and the part of him that wasn’t an angel anymore might have been vulnerable to that.

“You may wear them or you may not. I just thought you’d be more comfortable in them.”

“And you care if I’m comfortable or not because…?”

Castiel really had no way of answering that. He dared to lower his eyes to her face and kept them there, unblinking. They remained in silence, staring at each other until Meg tilted her head.

“What are you?” she asked.

Castiel also refused to answer that. Meg huffed.

“Fine, let’s try something different then: what’s Dean’s endgame here? Why hasn’t he killed me yet?”

“Why are you so eager to die?”

It was her turn to not offer any answers. She simply clicked her tongue, annoyed for the first time since Castiel had walked in there.

“I told you, I don’t know anything. Do you think Lucifer would’ve left me alive if that was the case?”

“It didn’t seem like he was too interested in keeping you alive either way,” Castiel pointed out.

That managed to anger her enough that she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

“Very funny. Bet you’re the life of the party out there in that camp of twitchy trauma survivors you and Dean-o are running,” she commented.

Castiel shouldn’t have been so surprised that she knew where they were. She had, after all, the very acute hearing of a demon.

“What happened in the warehouse where we found you?” he asked. “Why are your scars not fading?”

But Meg wasn’t interested in chatting anymore. She sat down in the same spot as she was before.

“Why don’t you figure it out, if you’re so smart?” she replied before she retreated back into herself, her body growing unnaturally still as her eyes became black once more.

Castiel figured he had done enough for the day and left. The following night, he returned at the exact same hour, this time empty-handed. Despite her protests, Meg had put on the blouse and the jeans he had left her, but the underwear remained defiantly on the edge of the trap. She was walking barefoot around it, as if trying to test its limits, even though every few steps she had to stop to pull the waistband of her pants up. She didn’t bother to acknowledge Castiel’s presence with a look when he walked in, but she started complaining right away:

“You could have chosen something with a little more style. Or at least my fucking size.”

“It’s the Apocalypse,” he replied. “It’s not like I can drive to the nearest store and buy something for you.”

Meg stopped her roaming and stared at him, her eyebrows rising high in surprise.

“Did you just make a joke?”

“No, it’s a statement,” Castiel replied. “Our supplies of gasoline are limited and Dean insists we have to ration them and use them in vital missions. The most populated areas, where I might find a clothing store I can loot, have been overrun with infected humans. Therefore, it would be unnecessarily risky to get out of the camp just to find new clothes for you.”

Meg stared at him, as if everything he had just said was somehow incredibly amusing to her.

“Infected humans?” she repeated. “And you don’t consider yourself part of that category?”

“I’m not infected,” Castiel said, before realizing he had just taken his first false step.

“And you’re also not a human,” Meg guessed. She narrowed her eyes at him, as if he was analyzing him closely. “I heard rumors that there was an angel helping out the Winchesters. But you’re not what I expected. For starters, I thought you’d be taller.” She took a step closer, before being stopped by the invisible barrier the trap formed. “And second, you don’t look like him.”

“Like who?” Castiel asked, before realizing there was probably only one angel Meg had seen regularly in the past year. “Lucifer.”

“He was always so… bright,” Meg explained. “But you don’t shine at all.”

Castiel bit the inside of his cheeks. He didn’t know why Meg’s words hurt him, why they affected him so deeply. She was a demon, after all. Nothing that came out of her mouth could be trusted or taken seriously. And yet…

She wasn’t trying to insult him or mock him. Not really, not this time. She was simply… making an observation that happened to be true. Perhaps that was exactly the reason.

“Lucifer is an archangel,” Castiel answered, once again before he could stop himself. “And he hasn’t been…”

He stopped himself, but Meg had been watching him close enough to know exactly where his words were going.

“Expelled,” she guessed, correctly. “You’re cut out from the home office now that the rest of the sissy cloudhoppers left, aren’t you?”

Castiel didn’t want to clarify what was obvious, so he didn’t. Meg’s cackle sounded cold and cruel in his ears.

“Oh, that’s just precious!” she exclaimed, between chuckles. “Little Clarence doesn’t have wings and can’t fly away so he’s left to rot like the rest of us. That is… wait, where are you going?”

Castiel turned her back on her and reached for the door in a few strides.

“Come on, Clarence! Just when we were starting to get to know each other!” she managed to shout at him before he closed the door behind him and secured it with the padlock.

“I can’t do it,” he told Dean when he went to his cabin to report on Meg.

Dean lifted his eyes from the knife he was sharpening. His mouth was a hard line and there was anger in his green eyes. Perhaps Castiel should have waited until he was in a better mood, because he said:

“Don’t give me that crap, Cas. I’m counting on you for this.”

“I don’t know what you expect to get from this,” Castiel said. “She’s already told us she knows nothing about Lucifer or the Colt’s whereabouts and…”

“She’s lying!” Dean shouted standing up so violently his chair fell backwards. “You know she is! They all lie, that’s what they _do_ , unless you rip the truth right out of them!”

Castiel stepped backwards, surprise at the violence of Dean’s reaction. Dean closed his eyes and took several shaky breaths before he dared to speak again. He raised his hands in a gesture of apology.

“I’m sorry, Cas. I’m… I have to find them. You know I have to do it.”

“You don’t even know if he…” Castiel started, but Dean shook his head to shut him up.

“Please, don’t fight me on this,” he begged. “I… just… I need you to help me out here.”

Castiel realized there was no point in arguing.

“Of course,” he replied, nodding to his friend. “But I still believe that interrogating Meg is a dead-end.”

“Give it another try,” Dean insisted. “Just one more try, Cas. You never know what we could use.”

Castiel nodded. He tried taking a step towards Dean (he wasn’t sure what he would do: hug him or put his hand in his shoulder to remind him he wasn’t fighting this war alone), but Dean turned his back on him and picked up his chair.

“Anything else?” he asked, coldly.

Castiel stepped back again.

“No. That’s all.”

A few minutes later, he found himself back in his cabin, on his knees again in front of the loose tile. It was disturbing how much this position looked like praying. Except he wasn’t asking for anything and didn’t expect an answer, of course. He just put the pill underneath his tongue, put the tile back in its place and dragged himself to bed to wait for its effects to take him far away from there, far from the camp and Dean’s rage, far away from Meg’s cruel laughter still echoing in his ears and the image of her body burned on the inside of his eyelids.

He didn’t know why he kept thinking about it. But for the last couple of nights, every time he closed his eyes, every time he was alone with his thoughts for too long, his mind insisted in going back to it. Meg standing in front of him, naked and defiant in her wounds, looking as vulnerable as she was dangerous with that smirk in her lips…

Suddenly his pants grew very uncomfortable. This had to be the worst of all the human impulses he’d had to get used to, just because of how frustrating and unpredictable it was. Dean had explained to him that it was normal, that thinking sexual thoughts sometimes was enough to rouse a reaction out of his body. It disturbed him, however, that a demon who happened to be using a female body would have that power over him.

His hands were a bit shaky as he undid the button and pulled down the zipper. It wasn’t enough to give him the release he craved, but at least he was a little bit more comfortable. He took deep slow breaths, letting his now light head wander around. He could wait until his arousal receded a little. He could go out and talk with some of the women in the camp. They were all friendly and kind and some of them had even expressed an interest in going to bed with him, though he failed to see why. He supposed that sexual contact could provide some sort of comfort to them in the face of their inevitable extinction.

And he wasn’t an angel anymore. He wasn’t held back by laws ancient as time and moral considerations. He could very well talk to one of them, bring her to his cabin, help her get rid of her clothes…

Castiel opened his eyes with a sigh. Those thoughts would definitely not help him calm down. There was one way, though, but he preferred to avoid it as it was often so… unhygienic. It didn’t seem to be another choice in his current state of mind, however.

He palmed his erection above his boxers at first, still imagining the hypothetical woman that he could have asked to come. He imagined her small hands sliding underneath his clothes, grabbing his cock the way he was doing now, stroking it slowly at first while his breathing hitched and his heart began pounding faster. He rolled over and hugged the pillow with his free hand, imagining it was her skin, a little warmer than his, tender and soft under his fingers. He sank his nose on her hair and breathed in the smell of blood, something savage and perilous that sent a shiver down his spine.

He began pumping his fist around his cock, faster and faster. In the middle of his pleasure, he forgot to pretend he wasn’t fantasizing about _her_. His orgasm caught him in the middle of thinking about Meg’s blackened eyes boring into his.

 

* * *

 

He hesitated for a long time outside the showers the following day, toying with the keys, walking away from the door only to force himself back to the spot from which he couldn’t move on.

It was clear as day that Meg had done something to him. Or maybe she hadn’t and they were just his new pesky human instincts and desires aiming for something he should avoid for his own good. So walking away would effectively mean he was weaker than his flesh, weaker than the impulses that drove his body even when his mind rebelled against them. At the same time, maybe being in the same room with her for too long would only be worse in the long run. Was it really wise to long for something that could and would rip his eyes out if he came too close to her?

But Dean had given him a mission. He had trusted him with this, he expected he would be able to help him. He was growing desperate and that wasn’t good: it meant he was very close to doing something reckless, something that would endanger the few people they had agreed to take care of.

In the end, it was Dean’s trust and not his eagerness to see if he was strong enough to resist temptation that helped Castiel decide. He opened the door and quickly closed behind him before he turned around.

Meg was once again sitting in the middle of the trap, but her eyes weren’t black. They were fixed on him. Before Castiel could take a step towards her, she stood up and with slow, deliberate movements, she pulled her shirt above her head.

“What are you doing?” Castiel asked, pinning his back against the door as if mere physical distance between the two would change anything.

Meg looked down at her naked torso as if only know she realized that she had exposed herself and looked back at him. She grinned wickedly.

“I heard you thinking on the other side of the door,” she told him. “They were very loud thoughts, Castiel.”

Castiel didn’t remember telling her his name, but he figured it must have been another thing she picked up from his mind. He had been careless and given her an advantage over him, but it was too late to truly regret it.

“Come on,” Meg said, her voice dropping to a seductive whisper. “You could do it, you know. I won’t tell Dean a thing if you don’t. And in here, I’m as weak as any human woman… well, not that you could tell the difference anyway, could you?”

Her laughter once again sounded like something perverse, something just a little off. Castiel remembered she was the prisoner there and slowly forced himself to look at her. He frowned at what he saw.

“Your scars,” he commented. “They aren’t vanishing.”

Meg’s grin disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“Seriously, Clarence? We were having fun.”

She picked up her shirt from the floor and put it back on, turning her back on him, sulkily. She truly could have passed as a scorned lover if it wasn’t for… well, everything that surrounded them.

“You call this having fun?”

“I guess since I am trapped in the body of a long since dead girl, I have the right to use it for something other than hurting, don’t I?” she asked, looking at him over her shoulder.

Castiel wasn’t sure what to answer to this. He too have been trapped in a body that the original occupant had left a long time ago, since the first time he died. He knew Jimmy’s soul was in heaven, as serving as an angel’s vessel guaranteed the human a place on it. But sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep at night, he couldn’t help but to wonder about the fate of the Novak family, he couldn’t help to remember the damage he had done to them only to ultimately fail in the mission of protecting the earth they lived in. Those nights, he allowed himself to swallow one extra pill.

He doubted Meg felt similar remorse.

"I could bring you something if you're bored," he offered instead, trying to forget the very uncomfortable moment. "Cards or maybe..."

"Are you serious right now?" Meg asked. She turned completely towards him so he had to confront the full force of her eyes. "Why do you keep trying to be nice to me?"

Castiel didn't say a word, but he didn't really have to. Realization dawned on Meg's face, her lips parting and her eyebrows raising.

"He's trying to get me to care about you."

She spat the words as if she was furious and then shook her head, as if she couldn't believe Dean's gall at trying a more... unconventional method of interrogation.

"Dean has nothing..." Castiel tried to lie, but it was too late for that and he was never good at it anyway.

"Please." Meg snickered. "I apprenticed under Alistair too. What, does he want me to open up and be vulnerable with you? Cry in your arms as I tell you all about how I was betrayed right before you stab me in the back too?"

"Who betrayed you?" Castiel asked, but Meg just sigh with exasperation and turned her back on him. "Lucifer?" he suggested.

"Did Dean tell you this trick only works with people the tortured person cares about?"

"He mentioned that, yes."

"Why'd you keep trying then, Clarence?" she snapped. "I don't care about you and everyone I ever cared about is dead now. Dean himself made sure of that."

There was something in her voice Castiel wasn’t expecting. Anger, yes, she was furious. But also something deeper, something so human that it startled him.

Sorrow. Grief.

"He... he did tell me about them," Castiel confessed. "Your brother and your father, and how they died. He also told me what you did to Sam..."

"Ah!" Meg exclaimed and finally looked at Castiel again. "So that's what this is all about. I should've known. Even at the end of the world you can count on the Winchesters being sickly co-dependent."

Castiel bowed his head, because Meg was right that this was the reason Dean was so desperate to find Lucifer and a way to kill him. He didn't expect to end to the Apocalypse or return things to the way they were before; everyone knew that was impossible.

Dean wanted to avenge his brother, even if it was the last thing he did. It probably would be.

He didn't need to say any of that out loud. Meg must have read it in his thoughts anyway. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to tell him something, but she changed her mind at the last second and simply started walking around the Devil's trap again, ignoring him once more.

"I'll bring you something tomorrow," Castiel decided, even though he failed to see the point now that Meg knew and understood what they were trying to do.

"Make it one of those things you take. Make it all of them, in fact," Meg suggested. "Maybe if I swallow them all, I'll get to feel a little high for a while."

Castiel left without another word. He headed directly for his cabin, thinking about how he could sink into unconsciousness for a little while. He found Dean waiting for him at the door.

"Hey," his friend said, standing up the moment he saw him. "How'd it go?"

Castiel looked at him and wondered what to tell him. He probably should tell them that Meg was unto them, that he truly believed there was nothing she could tell them that they didn't know already and that the safest, even the most compassionate thing to do would be to just kill her off and be done with it.

But just as those words were about to roll out of his tongue, he held them back. He couldn't explain why. He just didn't want Meg to die, not just yet at least.

"Nothing to report," he said instead. And Dean believed it because it was easier for Castiel to lie when there was some truth to what he was saying despite it all.

"Yeah, I didn't expect it to be easy. But let's keep it up a little longer, man. Maybe we'll get something from her, who knows."

"Yes," Castiel muttered. "Maybe."

Dean patted him in the shoulder, the way he did when he was pleased with Castiel. There was a time when he had craved that appreciation from his friend, but now it only left him feeling cold. It was just as Meg had said: his endgame here was to avenge Sam and he didn't care who died in the process.

Castiel supposed he shouldn't care either. There was no future to care about anyway.

As if Dean had perceived those gloomy thoughts, he pointed with his head towards the fire that the survivors had lit up.

"Why don't you come join us for dinner?" he suggested. "I heard Chuck's Surprise Stew tonight is going to be really, uh..."

"Surprising?" Castiel suggested.

Dean chuckled as if what he had said was really funny.

"Nah, it'll probably taste disgusting," he admitted. "But I think some company would be good for you, man. You've been... shut off, you know? That can't be doing your head any favors. And I sort of need you in peak condition."

If he hadn't added that last bit, perhaps Castiel would've accepted the invitation. Perhaps he would've approached the light and the warmth, share the laughter and the chatter and forget for one night the bleak destination they were facing.

But as he did, he was reminded of all the useless fights ahead and how quickly all those people who were now alive would go, too fast to even really learn their names. Whether they would die in a fight or whether the virus would get them, the result would be the same.

He didn't want to deal with that.

"No, thanks. I'm not hungry," he said, even though he hadn't eaten all afternoon.

"You sure?"

"Yes. I'll just... tuck in for the night."

Dean stared at him for a long time, as if he was about to insist, but in the end, he nodded and patted Castiel's arm again.

"Okay, man. You do you."

That was exactly what Castiel was planning on doing. He had promised himself he would try to ration the pills in his stash, but for the third night in a row, he knelt in front of the tile. It was the only way he could sleep, he reasoned as he waited for the effects to kick in. And wasn't physical rest important when it came to being in peak condition for whatever was next?

He knew those excuses and justifications were empty. He was slowly becoming more and more dependent on the pills. The thought that at the end of the day he would get to go back to his cabin and swallow one, lose himself in their blissful numbness, was the one thing that kept him going through the long, painful days. He was aware he was sliding down a path that had no return and that most humans would consider that a tragedy.

But he simply couldn't muster up the energy to care. He didn't see the point.

He closed his eyes and as it had happened every night since they had found her, his mind slid towards thoughts of Meg.

But instead of dreaming of her body again, Castiel remembered their conversation instead. He tried to pinpoint what had been the moment when her voice had broken and why it mattered.

She had no left to care about.

She was Azazel's daughter, or at least he had referred to her as such. And of course, Azazel was a Prince of Hell, he was Lucifer's herald, the demon chosen to find the fallen archangel's true vessel. So it wasn't hard to imagine he had passed on that same devotion to his "daughter".

But Lucifer had locked her up in that body. He had made it so her scars wouldn't fade. He had left her for dead in the middle of a massacre.

Castiel opened his eyes and sat up on the bed with a jolt. He had found a crack in Meg's shield that he thought he could use.

 

* * *

 

"Are you kidding me right now?"

Castiel didn't know what part of him bringing cards to his next interview indicated that he was in any way "kidding", but he figured that asking so would only earn him further mockery. So instead, he sat down near the edge of the Devil's trap and started shuffling the deck.

"I have learned some games in the past few months," he told Meg. "I find they are a good way to pass the time."

"And I would pass the time with you because..."

"You don't have to," Castiel said. “But since Dean expects me to keep trying to get information out of you…”

“So this is a way for you to ward off boredom while you pretend to interrogate me?” Meg deduced. She giggled with contempt. “Well, at least you’re smart enough to admit we’re wasting everyone’s time by keeping me alive here.”

Castiel didn’t answer right away, too busy laying down the cards to begin a game of solitaire.

“Boredom is one of the biggest dangers we have in the camp. If we don’t find ways to keep ourselves busy, that allows for too much time to ponder about our impending fate. Many people get depressed and well… that’s not a good thing for the camp’s morale.”

“So that’s why you haven’t mentioned to them your little issue with the pills?” Meg asked.

Castiel said nothing as he turned the cards in his hand, trying to find a match.

“I didn’t even have to read your mind,” Meg continued. “I could smell it on you. You really sank low.”

“Desperation will do that to you,” Castiel admitted, with a little shrug. He found the card he needed and moved a pile to the left. “When you’ve lost all reason to live, finding comfort in the bottom of a bottle doesn’t sound all the morally bankrupt. Many of these survivors do this and Dean turns a blind eye on it as long as it doesn’t interfere with the mission. I personally prefer drugs. Their effects last longer and the aftermath isn’t as unpleasant.”

He reached the end of the deck and looked at the cards he still had left. It didn’t look promising.

“Are you trying to get me to pity you?” Meg asked. Castiel didn’t have to look to know she was rolling her eyes. There was a shuffle in front of him and he caught Meg’s bare feet out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to see her towering over him, a contemptuous smirk on her lips. “Or are you trying to get me to sympathize?”

“Why would we sympathize with each other?” Castiel asked.

Meg said nothing and went back to ignoring him. Castiel continued his game, letting his mind wonder as his hands manipulated the cards.

“Is it because we used to be much more powerful than we are now? I could heal or smite anything or anyone with a touch of my hand. I could move things with my mind, lift great weights just with my will. I used to work miracles.” He sighed. “Now I can’t even get a demon to talk to me.”

That made her laugh. It was a strangled sound that died quickly, as if she hadn’t meant to let it out of her throat. But he’d heard it and looked at her again. She had sat far away from him, at the other end of the trap, and she was still not looking at him, but her shoulders had relaxed greatly.

“I miss flying,” she confessed in a whisper, like it was a secret. “When I first got topside, I did it all the time. Just hovered over all the humans and their pathetic little lives. I used to darken the sun, ride on stormy winds and pour down on them like the rain…”

She went quiet, as if those thoughts were part of a remote past that hurt her. Castiel watched her closely, but she didn’t look like she wanted to keep talking. He returned to his game.

“Of course, I couldn’t do that for too long,” she admitted after a while. “I had to get a meatsuit. I had a mission.”

Castiel found himself curious about that statement. For a moment, he forgot that he was trying to do and let his own experiences talk for him:

“Did you find it overwhelming?” he asked. Meg arched up an eyebrow at him. “When I first took possession of my vessel, it was… strange. Of course, I’ve never had a body before that.”

“Neither have I,” Meg replied.

“You must have. You were a human once,” Castiel reminded her. “All demons were.”

Meg shook her head. “I don’t remember being one. I don’t even remember my true name,” she admitted. She closed her fist and opened it again, looking down at her nails pensively. “So I chose a pretty little girl at random and I took her name. It was as good as any.”

“You killed her.”

“I’ve killed a lot more for a lot less.” Meg shrugged and finally lifted up her eyes at him. The scar on her face formed a strange pattern that was altered when she smiled. “Look at you. You’ve got me all nostalgic. I’m sure Dean will be happy to know how pathetic and alone I am.”

Castiel looked down at his game, with a frown. The cards were locked and he had no way to continue. With a sigh, he picked them up into the deck again and started shuffling.

“I won’t tell Dean,” he promised.

“You can tell him whatever you want. It’s not like I care what he thinks of me.”

“I won’t tell him, because nothing you’ve said so far is useful to us,” Castiel explained. “Dean has very little patience for things that don’t concern the mission these days.”

“Right. The grand mission.” Meg rolled her eyes. “He won’t succeed, you know?”

“At this point, I don’t believe he is too concerned with success,” Castiel said. “He just needs something to keep his mind busy, like everyone else here.”

He stopped, his fingers fumbling with the cards. Until he’d said it out loud, he hadn’t realized the truth of that statement. He had to wonder: if Dean didn’t have his mission, would he drinking himself to death or taking pills like Castiel did?

“Well, all the better for him,” Meg continued, interrupting those thoughts. “If he does manage to recover the Colt and stand in front of Lucifer, he won’t be able to pull the trigger.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

“Come on, Clarence.” Meg’s smile was sharp with irony. “You and I know that he would never kill his precious little Sammy.”

The cards slid from his fingers and spread on the floor, but Castiel didn’t pay attention to them.

“Sam is dead,” he said. His voice didn’t come out as firm as he’d hoped. “Lucifer is just using his body as a vessel.”

“Not quite. I mean, he is asleep most of the time, but sometimes Lucifer gives him a little room to struggle. I think it amuses him…” She stopped talking and stared at Castiel, realization slowly dawning on her face at his silence. “You… you didn’t know?”

Castiel said nothing. He remembered having Jimmy Novak’s soul with him, barely a small presence within his mind, but it had been there nonetheless until his body was destroyed and then…

How could he have been so stupid?

 

* * *

 

“Say that again.” Dean’s eyes were almost manic as he walked the edge of the Devil’s trap, staring at Meg with Ruby’s knife in his hand. “I said, say that again, you bitch!”

“It’s not my fault you didn’t think this through, Dean-o,” Meg replied, not even moving from the exact center of the pentagram where she stood. Her smirk was taunting in the face of Dean’s absolute rage. “But you heard me the first five times. Your little brother is alive inside Lucifer’s mind…”

“No.” Dean turned his back on her, as if he couldn’t bear to hear her, even though it had been him who had asked her to talk in the first place. “No. He can’t be.”

“Sometimes Lucifer just lets him scream for hours,” Meg continued, her tone downright mocking now. “If you ask me, Sam ought to be thankful for it. He gets a front row seat to all the killing and destruction…”

“Shut the fuck up!” Blind, Dean stepped into the trap and pushed her against the wall. He raised his hand, the knife’s blade glinting in the impersonal white light, and Meg closed her eyes and raised her chin, offering him her neck.

Castiel grabbed his friend’s wrist before he could strike the killing blow.

“Dean, no,” he muttered. “Please.”

Dean glared at him with such fury that his green eyes looked almost black. He freed himself from Castiel’s grip and stepped away as if he was disgusted, completely forgetting that he was about to kill Meg.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” he roared at Castiel.

He would have liked to have a good, noble reason. He would have liked to say that he was trying to spare Dean the anguish that this knowledge would bring him, that he hadn’t believe Lucifer would be cruel enough to keep Sam alive. But the truth was that he had been so preoccupied with his own destruction, groveling over the fact the others angels had left him behind, that he hadn’t had a moment to spare a thought for Sam. He had just been another casualty among the thousands they had endured already. Like Bobby. Like Ellen and Jo. Like so many others that Castiel had stopped trying to learn their names.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he muttered, because an apology was really the only thing he had to offer at this point.

Dean huffed and walked away from him and Meg. A gesture of frustration crossed the demon’s face, but it was gone just as fast as it appeared.

“Well, what you gonna to do now?” she asked. “Go all Saving Private Ryan on him? You can’t exactly force Lucifer to vacate the premises.”

“Shut up!”

Dean paced around the floor, his shoulders tense, his grip so tight around the knife’s handle his knuckles were white. Finally, he stopped and shook his head.

“It changes nothing,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Nothing at all. She’s right. We can’t make Lucifer leave. Sam isn’t dead, but he might as well be. We continue like before. We find the Colt and we kill the son of a bitch.”

He turned heel and headed for the door.

“Wait.” Meg stepped to the edge of the trap and called out: “Wait, Dean!”

Dean didn’t turn around, as if he hadn’t heard her at all. Castiel took one look at the demon, who was now growing desperate.

“Dean, you motherfucker!” she screamed. “Come back here and finish it! Dean!”

“Cas, let’s go,” Dean replied simply, ignoring her.

Castiel followed him outside. What else was he going to do?

“No, no, no! Dean!” Meg shouted. “I will tear you apart, you hear me? You and every single person in this camp unless you…!”

Dean closed the door behind him, drowning out her screams. He walked away with Castiel in tow, not saying a word. He was still visibly fuming from what he’d just found out. Castiel waited until they were back in Dean’s cabin to speak:

“What are we going to do with her?”

Dean glared at him again, as if he still hadn’t forgiven him for not telling him about Sam, but he moved his chair and sat down, placing his elbows on the table and intertwining his fingers in a pensive gesture.

He looked exhausted. If anyone else in the camp had come in right then, they wouldn’t have seen anything out of the ordinary, just their leader thinking deeply about something. But Castiel could see the tense lines around his shoulders, the way his eyes had darkened. This information was tearing him up inside.

Meg must have known it would have that effect on him. It was probably exactly what she was after.

Had she lied? Had she only said that because she knew that it would infuriate Dean? She was still trying to die, after all. And she knew Dean’s weakness was and would always be Sam.

Then again, the off-handed way she had mentioned it, like she had assumed they knew already…

“I can’t kill her,” Dean said, cutting off Castiel’s train of thoughts.

Castiel sat down on his bed with a sigh.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s exactly what that bitch wants.”

Castiel was about to point out that was needlessly petty and vindictive. It wasn’t Meg’s fault that Sam was still alive, it was Lucifer’s. But at the last second, he bit his tongue and nodded.

“You can’t leave her there,” he said instead. “She’s patient. She could find a way to break the trap and when she does… you heard her. She’s going to rampage through the camp until she gives you no choice. She could cause as much harm as any Croat…”

“I know!” Dean snapped. He took a breath and leaned back on his chair before repeating in a softer tone: “I know. But I can’t exactly let her go on her marry way either. She could go back to Lucifer, tell him about the camp’s location.”

“That would be disastrous,” Castiel agreed.

He didn’t add he thought Meg wouldn’t go back to Lucifer. She hadn’t let on too much and he still wasn’t sure what had happened in the warehouse, but he believed Meg just wasn’t the loyal soldier she’d once been.

“You could… find a use for her,” he suggested.

Dean let out a bitter chuckle, as if he thought Castiel was making a bad joke.

“Yeah, doing what exactly? Scavenging for us?”

“Maybe,” Castiel said, cautiously. Dean huffed with incredulity, but Castiel continued: “She’s a demon. She’s stronger and faster than any of the survivors. She’s immune to the Croatan virus. Her blood could even help…”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Dean said, raising a hand as if to physically stop Castiel from talking. “Demon blood is more addictive than any drug and we have enough junkies in the camp as it is.”

Castiel leaned his head, accepting Dean’s argument. Even if they somehow had the resources to use the demon’s blood to create a vaccine or maybe even a cure, it was no guarantee that it wouldn’t be addictive to the people who used it. It had been Sam’s downfall, after all.

Dean was lot calmer now, however.

“How do you propose we convince her to help? Because she’s not going to do it out of the goodness of her heart, that’s for sure.”

“Give me some time,” Castiel request her. “I might find something.”

Dean eyed him for a long time, almost as if he was about to reconsider the whole proposition, but in the end, he shrugged.

“Okay, Cas. You do what you gotta do.”

Castiel figured the conversation was over, so he got up to leave and headed for the door.

“Why do you even care what we do with her anyway?”

The fallen angel halted on his tracks and turned his head to look at Dean over his shoulder. He considered telling him, telling him all the thoughts that had been running through his mind lately and how Meg fit in all of them.

But at the last second, he bit his tongue. Dean already had so much on his shoulders without needing to hear just how low Castiel had sunk those days.

“I don’t know,” he lied.

He left before Dean could ask any follow up questions.

 

* * *

 

Castiel found Meg lying on her side on the trap the following day, staring into space almost as immobile and indifferent as when they had first brought her to the camp. But at least her eyes were normal brown instead of pure black, so he knew that she hadn’t retreated inside of herself again.

He sat by the edge of the trap and she raised her gaze at him, lazily.

“What?” she snapped. “Did Dean send you to remind me that he’s just not going to do me a favor and end it?”

“If you’re so desperate to die, you could do it yourself,” Castiel pointed out.

Meg laughed as if he had just told a very funny joke and sat up very slowly.

“Trust me, I’ve tried. But the only way I could do it in here is if I hit my head against the wall over and over. And I heal far too fast for it to kill me.” She cracked her neck to one side and then to the other. “Not fast enough for it not to hurt like a bitch, though.”

Castiel said nothing to this. He supposed he was the last person that could blame her for wanting to end her own life. Instead, he showed her the brown paper bag he had in his hand and the full bottle of Scotch inside.

“We found it on a liquor store, a few months ago,” he explained as he took off the lid. “We’re supposed to store all the alcohol for the medical supplies, but… I know what time the guard takes his bathroom break.”

Meg’s jaw slacked open. She looked at the liquor, then back at Castiel and let out a cackle.

“I guess there are some perks to not working for Heaven anymore, huh?”

Castiel sat outside the Devil’s trap, with his back against the concrete wall, and took a sip. The alcohol burned on his throat and his chest, and even though this wasn’t the substance he had chosen to abuse, he cherished it anyway.

“Come on, you’re just gonna sit there and not give me a drop?” she asked.

“Well, of course, I could,” Castiel said, looking into the golden liquid as if it had the answer of all the dilemmas that haunted him. “But you could break it against the wall and use the glass to slit your throat.”

“Or I could slit _your_ throat,” Meg shot back. “I could grab you and drag you into the trap. I’m sure Dean would be pissed to lose his angel boy-toy.”

Castiel took another sip, trying to find the best words to explain the situation to her.

“Dean is not going to kill you,” he announced her. “I’m afraid your intentions were too obvious and he now considers death as a reward that you haven’t earned.”

He studied her face closely. For a several minutes, Meg showed no signs of being affected by that declaration. Then, slowly, an unhinged grin bloomed on her lips and became almost a grimace the more it grew.

“Well, there’s that I guess,” she said. She stretched her hand to get the bottle, but Castiel hesitated.

“Promise you’re not going to break it until we finish drinking it, at least?” he requested. “I would hate to have gone through all the trouble of stealing just to die before I could get drunk from it.”

Meg tilted her head. The white scars on her face were visible despite the scarce light.

“You’re a strange one, aren’t you, Clarence?” she asked. “Fine, I won’t break it. I don’t know how much a demon’s promise is worth to you, but I won’t do it.”

Castiel put the bottle on the floor and pushed it past the trap’s boundaries so Meg couldn’t grab his hand and dragged him inside as she had threatened to do. Meg didn’t break the bottle, however. She lifted up to her lips and took a long swig from it, sighing with satisfaction when she put it down again.

“That’s nice,” she commented. “I’m gonna miss this. Booze was one thing that humans always did right.”

She set the bottle back down and pushed back to him.

“Why are you so focused on dying, anyway?” Castiel asked after taking another swig himself. “You escaped whatever happened in that warehouse. Why aren’t you angry? Why aren’t you trying to get revenge?”

Meg received the bottle and toyed with it in silence for a long while.

“Because there’s no one left to get revenge on,” she explained. “I was the last survivor. I won. Go, me.”

She lifted the bottle as if to make a toast and drank from it.

“You won?” Castiel repeated, frowning.

“It was a death match,” Meg explained. “Lucifer started them a few months ago, supposedly to eliminate the weaklings. Rarely anyone lived to tell what had happened, but one demon did. You know what Lucifer did to him when he returned?”

She stretched her open palm and made a puffing sound with her lips, mimicking the smiting of someone.

“I happened to saw it and that’s when I got it. He wasn’t trying to weed out the weakest. He was systematically eliminating us,” she told him. “He was always talking about this New World Order, about destroying the old creation to install a new one. His own. More perfect and pure than what was here before.” She laughed and shook her head with incredulity. “Guess there’s just no place for us, his first damn creations, in that new world. So, once I figured it out, I had to go too.”

She gave the bottle back but Castiel didn’t grab it right away. He observed her face closely. Though she had explained it all almost nonchalantly, he could see that there was a deep sadness in her eyes, a pain in her voice that she hadn’t quite managed to hide.

“I’m sorry.”

“Fucking spare me.” Meg rolled her eyes. “As far as Lucifer knows, I’m dead and it’s not like he’s wrong, is it? I can’t go back to him and I might just manage to annoy Dean enough to get him to kill me one of these days. It doesn’t really matter anyway.” She fixed her eyes on him. “You know this, right? You know there’s no winning here.”

Castiel carefully considered those words as he took another drink.

“I think it does,” he said in the end. “I think it matters. You said it yourself, there’s no way we can win. We’re still alive, but only technically. So why not go out our own way instead of waiting for someone else to kill us?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do all this time,” Meg pointed out. “And what you’ve been trying to do, too, isn’t it? One of these days, you’re going to take one too many of those precious pills you store and clock out forever.”

Castiel didn’t even try to deny it. Meg would know if he lied to her.

“We could do each other in,” she suggested. “You steal Dean’s demon killing knife, I cut your throat out.”

“No.”

He didn’t even have to think about it. He didn’t know if he was cowardice or loyalty. He just knew he couldn’t do that to Dean.

“Right. You still care about that pesky little human,” she pointed out. She wasn’t wrong. “You could have left with the rest of the angels, but you stayed. Why?”

“Because I felt responsible,” Castiel confessed. “I was supposed to watch over the Winchesters. I failed… and this is all my fault.”

“Oh, don’t think you were so important. Lucifer had a very well thought-out plan. I know. I was in the war room when he designed it.”

Castiel licked his lips. He didn’t have to believe the words he would say next, he just had to make them sound convincing enough that she would listen to them.

“There is another option, if you would consider it.”

Meg was still staring at him. Her scarred face showed no emotion, but she did raise an eyebrow as if to indicate that she was listening.

“You can fight,” Castiel told her. “You will go down, it’s true. Sooner rather than later, if you choose to do this instead of sitting here and waiting for the end. But at the very least it will be a death you chose for yourself. Who knows, you might even manage to bother Lucifer enough that he will remember you.”

Meg said nothing for the longest of times. Then, slowly, like a flower blooming or like the sun rising in the horizon, a bitter grin appeared on her lips. She raised her hands and gave out three slow, cynical claps.

“That was good, Clarence!” she said, with a laugh. “That was very good. I didn’t buy it for a second, but that was a very valiant attempt. Did you rehearse that or was it all improv?”

Castiel gave her a sad look. If she refused, if she said she had no interest in helping them, then there was nothing else he could do. Dean would remove his key privileges and leave Meg to rot inside of that trap for who knew how long until he changed his mind. And Dean was stubborn, so that would take some time.

Castiel knew he had done everything he could to change Meg’s fate and he had failed. He still tried to pretend that her response hadn’t been a definitive no.

“You can think about it,” he told her. He took one last sip from the bottle and pushed it towards her so she could have the last of the whiskey. He’d forgotten about her threat of using the glass to end her own life, or maybe this was him giving her yet another choice. He didn’t tell her any of this, because his tongue felt heavy and it was hard to get the words out: “I’ll go now.”

The whiskey must have been stronger than he thought or he must have drunk far too much of it, because his feet staggered when he tried to stand up. He leaned against the wall, waiting for the room to stop spinning and for the sudden burn in his stomach to die out.

“Why do you care?”

Meg’s voice came as if from very far away. Castiel blinked and, slowly to not disturb his dizzy head, he turned to look at her over his shoulder.

“What?”

“Why do you care how I die anyway?” she asked him. She was standing now and had the bottle in her hand, and she was looking down at it, as if she was considering smashing it against the floor. “Why does it matter to you? And I want the truth, not whatever bullshit you sold to Dean so he would let you ask me to work for him.”

Castiel wondered if she had read his mind or if it really had been that obvious what he was trying to do. He spun on his heels to face her.

“I… I don’t know,” he said, but that wasn’t going to cut it for her. “I think… maybe you’re like me. No, not maybe. You and I are the same. You were a soldier. You believed in… something. That you were fighting for something bigger than you. I can understand that. Even if I don’t understand that you chose to believe in Lucifer’s cause… I can understand why you did.”

He stopped to take a deep breath. He had the sudden impression that the floor was going to cave in underneath his feet, or maybe it was that his knees were shaking.

“And we were both betrayed. Left behind. We have nothing now. And you’re right, I’m just waiting for the inevitable end, not even trying to stop it.” He raised his eyes at her. Her face was inscrutable. “But I’m thinking maybe if you chose to fight too… if you chose to keep going despite knowing it’s hopeless… then I could too. Then I don’t have to just… clock out forever.”

Meg said nothing. Castiel kept looking at her, but when she continued to stay silent he got ready to leave again.

“Fine.”

The word came so faint and so far away that for a moment, he was convinced he hadn’t really heard it.

“What?”

“I said fine,” Meg repeated a little louder. She was smiling again, the scars on her face twisting slightly. She raised the bottle at Castiel and chugged down the rest of the alcohol in one gulp. She sighed with satisfaction once she was finished. “Maybe if I try it your way, I’ll get to go with some semblance of dignity.”

 

* * *

 

The details took some adjustment. Dean wasn’t about to just let a demon roam free around the camp without some sort of guarantee that she couldn’t cause any damage. Castiel helped designed the spells that would be edged on the bracelets they designed for her. The camp’s welder (Castiel was almost sure his name was Jonathan. Or it could have been just Jonah) threw a suspicious glance at them when they asked for his help to make them out of scraps of iron, but he didn’t have a chance to ask too many questions or spread rumors around the camp. Just a week later, he contracted the virus. He chose to pull the trigger himself.

The men that had gone with them to the expedition where they found Meg were sworn to secrecy by Dean, and when they expressed their doubts about the viability of this plan, they were threatened into silence. Castiel however made a point to memorize their faces and names, in case information they didn’t want out got out.

To everyone else, Meg would be a survivor they had found hurt nearby and brought in. Nobody would question their story. The individual past of the survivors was a taboo topic for everybody.

Meg received the bracelets with an amused smirk on her lips.

“Kinky. I like,” she commented. Castiel said nothing as he adjusted them around her wrists and locked them up. The skin under his fingertips was soft and warmth, but he tried to put that thought aside as Meg lifted the bracelets to her face and read the marks in them. “Let’s see: a binding spell so I can’t remove these and… what’s that?” she asked, her fingers sliding over the carefully drawn runes on the metal.

“Enochian. It’s better for more nuanced spells,” Castiel explained. He gave the key to Dean, who very ostensibly put it inside of his pocket. It would put away along with the rest of the ammunition that Dean kept for himself as camp leader, away from anyone who could steal it, including Meg. “It’s meant to weaken you, but not incapacitate you. You’ll still be able to sustain a large amount of damage without dealing it yourself. This and whatever is it that Lucifer did to you…”

“It guarantees you won’t do much harm if you go rogue,” Dean said. He was leaning near the door, toying almost casually with Ruby’s knife in his hand. He glared at Meg with his jaw clenched tight. “And we’ll be looking closely to stop you the second you do. I don’t trust you.”

“Is that right, Deanie boy?” Meg asked. Her smile was mocking. “What should I do to prove my loyalty to you? Get down on my knees and pledge my life?”

In three energetic strides, Dean was standing in front of her, his grip around the knife’s handle so tight Castiel thought he would have to prevent him from stabbing her once again.

“Listen, bitch. Cas here thinks that you can be useful to us and you better pray he’s right,” he told her. “You get one chance. You throw it, and you’re out, do you hear me?”

“Well, I’m not much the praying type, being a demon and all,” Meg said, chuckling as if she thought Dean was making a very funny joke. Dean’s face remained serious so Meg raised her hands in surrender. “But I hear you.”

Dean threw her one last glare and then he stepped back. Castiel took out his own hunting knife (a common one) and leaned down to scratch the painting on the floor, creating an opening for Meg to get out of the trap. The demon raised a foot and hesitated, almost as if she thought there was a catch to all of this. But when she put it outside of the circle without any issues, she seemed relieved.

Dean, on his part, kept the knife ready in case she made any false movements.

“Alright, then.” Meg grinned at him, all teeth and confidence. “What now?”

“We’re already tucking in for the night,” Castiel said. “We should find a cabin or a tent for you.”

“No. No way,” Dean interrupted him. “This was your idea. I don’t care if you have to sleep with one eye open, you’re not gonna let her out of your sight.”

He marched out before Castiel had the chance to ask him how exactly he was supposed to do that. That wasn’t part of the plan: they had discussed Meg getting her own accommodations so people at the camp wouldn’t find her presence there strange. Dean had said nothing about him having to personally guard Meg, but he was prone to changing plans when he was angry or upset. And he had all the reasons in the world to be angry and upset towards Meg.

That didn’t mean Castiel was sure this was the soundest plan. Especially when Meg smirked and winked an eye at him.

“Well, I guess that means we’re going to be bunkies.”

Castiel had not forgotten the shape of her body underneath those ill-fitting clothes, he hadn’t forgotten her weight in his arms while he carried her out of the carnage or the thoughts that had gone through his mind while he was touching himself. All of those things almost made him run out after Dean and tell him that he had changed his mind, that he just couldn’t be around Meg without the ditch that was his despair getting deeper.

But at the same time…

“I don’t sleep much,” Castiel told her as she walked into his cabin and looked around. “But if you want I can take the couch…”

“Aren’t you a gentleman?” Meg said. There was no point in trying to figure out if she meant it or if she was only teasing him again. “Demon, remember? I don’t sleep at all. I just stay awake all night and plan on ways of corrupting human souls.”

“Please, don’t do that,” Castiel requested. “I’m sure the souls in this camp are corrupted enough without your influence.”

Meg turned towards him, both her eyebrows raised almost to her hairline.

“Was that another joke, Clarence?”

Castiel hadn’t meant to do it. At the same time, it didn’t particularly bother him that she thought that.

“Make yourself comfortable. I need to… take care of some things.”

His visit to the latrines right outside the camp’s living area wasn’t long. He did as Dean instructed and didn’t lose sight of his cabin the entire time. The rumors were already starting to fly around the camp because one man (Lenny? Louie?) came up to him while he was heading back and asked him if it was true he and Dean had found a woman “in the woods”.

“We… yes, we did,” Castiel told him, taking a mental note that he had to get his story straight with Dean.

Lenny’s face lit up a little.

“Do you know what this means? We’re not the only ones left. There are others out there, and they might be closer than we think. Maybe if she can tell us where she came from…”

Castiel didn’t have the heart to tell him that even if there were other survivor groups somewhere in the world, it was very unlikely that they would come into contact with them. But he knew that the hope of finding others, finding the families they had lost when the disaster started, was what kept many of them going. So he didn’t have the heart to tell him differently.

Sometimes a false hope was kinder than the truth.

“Dean has ordered me to keep an eye on her for the time being. Until we know if it’s safe,” he said. It wasn’t a lie, technically.

Louie (or Lenny) nodded solemnly. They all knew Castiel was Dean’s right hand man and some of them even believed the stories about him being an angel.

“Well, man, I’ll let you go back to it, then,” Lenny said, giving him a pat on the back.

Castiel took his eyes off the cabin for a moment just to fix them in the back of that man’s head while he disappeared in the darkness that surrounded the camp, perhaps to memorize. There were some fires already starting and he could hear the distant murmur of laughter and chatter while they gathered around the light and warmth to share a meal, a meal that they didn’t know if it could be the last or not. It was amazing, something he would never stop admiring in humans: their capacity to forget, to hope despite the odds. To fix their eyes on a goal and walk towards it despite all the evidence that they would never reach it.

That was what he was missing. That was what he tried to forget with the pills and the booze, but he could never quite get it right.

He was lost in those thoughts when he walked inside his cabin again. He halted, his heart sinking in his chest at the sight.

Meg had turned on the candles on his nightstand that he used for illumination. Her faced glowed strangely golden as she sat on his bed, rolling one of his bottles between her hands to make the pills inside rattle.

“Took me all of two seconds to find your stash,” she commented. Her voice was flat and emotionless, her eyes lightless as they followed the movement of the bottle in her hand.

Castiel felt the blood fleeing from his face as he ran towards the removed tile. Most of his pills were still in place. Meg had apparently only taken one bottle to make a point to him. He sighed in relief and turned towards her.

“Meg…” he started. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her, but it got completely lost when she threw the bottle back to him.

“You gave me a choice, so I’m gonna give one to you now,” she said. The stare she fixed on him reminded him of a lioness stalking its prey, something primitive and savage hidden right underneath her human exterior. “If I don’t get to clock out, neither do you. So you get rid of the pills or you get rid of me. Those are your options.”

Castiel squeezed the bottle in his hand, but other than that, nothing gave away the terrified gut reaction he’d had at hearing those words.

“How do you expect to make that happen? You can’t remove the bracelets. You can’t…”

“I’ll find a way,” Meg replied, and even though Castiel couldn’t think of one, he was absolute certain she was telling the truth. She crossed her arms over her chest, but her features softened a little bit. “You don’t have to decide right now, Clarence. Think it over. And let me know.”

Castiel lowered his eyes towards the pills. He didn’t realize he was gritting his teeth until his jaw started to ache.

“You don’t understand,” he told her. “I can’t… without these, I can’t… it hurts too much…”

“There are other ways to forget about the pain, Castiel.”

He didn’t have to ask how she had known that was what he was trying to say. She was in his mind. So of course she would say whatever he wanted or needed to hear. He was suddenly reminded of the fact she was demon and she must have had a long term plan that he wasn’t seeing. Why would she insist…?

She put her hand on his, gently pushing the pills away from him. Her face was so close now that he could see the thin black circle around her brown pupils and he had time to wonder if that belonged to the body or to the demon before she put a hand on the back of his head and pushed him down towards her mouth.

The surprise prevented him from reacting at first. Her lips were soft and warm against his, but hesitant. After a few seconds, she stepped back, leaving him cold and confused. She smirked at him, but there was something missing from it: there was no smugness in it, no mockery. It was like she had asked him a question and now she was waiting for his answer.

Castiel didn’t have to think about it for too long. He grabbed her by the waist and spun around with her, pushing her against the nearest wall. Her mouth was opened to him and the touch of her tongue against him sent a shiver down his spine. His breathing became heavier and his mind was reeling, the way it did when he took a shot of good whiskey or when the pills had just started to kick in. It wasn’t until they broke apart, his hand still on her neck, her lips parted as if she expected more, that he realized he had dropped the bottle of pills when she’d first kissed him.

Meg’s smirk returned easily.

“A plus for you, Clarence. Have you done this before?”

“I… I have some theoretical knowledge,” Castiel said.

Meg threw her head back and let out a long, amused laugh. She grabbed him by the hand and guided him to the bed.

Before the world completely collapsed around them, Dean had insisted that Castiel needed to find some… company, of the sexual kind. And it wasn’t that Castiel hadn’t felt the impulse, as many other human impulses that had overcame him when the last of his grace finally burned out, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to share something as personal, as intimate as sex, with a woman that he would lose just as inevitably as everything else.

That didn’t mean that he hadn’t indulged his curiosity, with scattered material that he had recovered during their scavenging expeditions, or that he had been as profoundly asleep as he had pretended to whenever Dean engaged with one of the women on the group before they had settled in the camp and the cabins and tent gave everyone some semblance of privacy.

But Meg was different.

Her fingernails travelled down his back, their caress becoming a mean scratch when he sank his face on her breasts and left a bite on each one. She was aggressive and loud, so Castiel figured he should respond in kind, kissing her like he wanted to devour her, pressing her so tight against him it was mesmerizing that their skins didn’t melt together. He let his hands slide down her sides, tracing the white marks the fight against her own kind had left on them…

Meg pushed him up, a sudden haunted look on her face.

“No,” she muttered.

“What?” he asked, tilting his head in confusion. “They’re… I’ve already seen most of your scars, Meg.”

“Well, doesn’t mean I want you to be all lovey-dovey about them,” she replied. She sounded angry. “I just want you to fuck me. Is that too much to ask?”

Castiel closed his eyes for a second. Meg’s agenda finally came into focus in his mind and he was truly surprised that he hadn’t seen it before.

She was using him to forget, just as he had used the pills.

But did it matter when he was, in a way, using her as well?

Perhaps it didn’t, he thought as he went back to kissing her, as he slid the ripped jeans down her legs to finally leave her laying completely naked and exposed for him on his bed. And perhaps that was the reason she wanted him away from the drugs. She was a selfish and jealous lover, she wanted him all to herself.

Castiel sank his face between her legs, savoring her musky taste on his tongue until she let out a scream, until the grip of her legs around his neck became strangling. He held onto her thighs, bruising her skin. They would heal soon enough, but at least for a moment, there would be physical evidence that they had been together in her body.

He couldn’t explain why that was important to him.

Meg grasped him by the hair and unceremoniously yanked him back up to her mouth.

“Enough foreplay. I want you now,” she demanded. Her iron bracelets scraped his skin while she pulled his boxers down.

Castiel couldn’t do much when she grabbed him by the shoulders and spun around to pin him down on the bed. She left a burning kiss on his neck, her teeth biting at the soft flesh while she slowly lowered herself in her erection until he was fully buried in her. He arched his back and a moan escaped his throat while she began to move, riding him without any care or gentleness. Castiel was hanging unto the sheets with one hand while the other rested on the curve of her ass, but Meg didn’t seem to mind what he did anymore. She threw her head back in ecstasy, and when she looked down at Castiel again, her eyes were demonically black.

It was too much for him to bear.

The wave of pleasure shook him, leaving him panting and limp over the bed. He closed his eyes, trying and failing to catch his breath, but he opened them up again when he felt Meg moving to get off of him. She had an irritated expression on her face.

“Dammit,” she muttered, as she sat on the edge of the bed.

“Meg… you didn’t…?”

“Don’t sweat it, Clarence. I should have known better than getting into bed with an angel that comes too soon.”

She leaned down and stretched her hand to pick up her shirt from the floor, but she never reached it. If she hadn’t been distracted, Castiel was certain he wouldn’t have managed to pull her back into the bed with him. He held her tight against his chest, kissing her to shut her up when she craned her neck at him. He tangled his fingers in the soft bush between her legs before he slid one inside of her cunt, watching her reaction closely. She let out a surprised moan.

“I… I appreciate the initiative, Clarence but…”

“I want to make you feel good, too,” he said, as he added another finger to the first and curled them. Meg sighed with pleasure and the same wicked grin as before appeared on her face.

“Well, have at it, then.”

She was wet and soft in there. The inside of her thighs were a mess with a combination of her juices and his own seed, something that would have made Castiel hard again if he hadn’t been so spent. Despite her protest, he left a trail of kisses over the scar that started in her cheek and fell down all the way to her collar bone at the same time he thrust his fingers into her, carefully following her breathy instructions:

“Faster! Come on, angel, is that all you’ve got? I’ve…”

Castiel smiled when he managed to get her words to dissolve in incoherent curses and whispers. He added a third finger and searched between the folds to find her clit, circling it with his thumb until Meg’s body tensed up and she let out one last prolonged moan. Her eyes were pure black again and Castiel watched her come undone, fascinated.

He hadn’t imagined it would be like that. He had no idea he would be struck by that rush of pride, that sort of high as she relaxed by his side, her breasts softly rising and falling with every breath she took.

Meg didn’t move or said anything for a while. When she finally turned her head to look at him, her eyes were back to normal and there was no trace of anything demonic in her appearance. She just looked happily tired and satisfy.

“Well… last time I disparage theoretical knowledge.”

Castiel continued staring at her, silent.

“That was a joke,” she clarified. “You’re supposed to laugh.”

He stretched his hand and softly brushed a lock of hair from her face. His fingertips barely grazed the scar on her cheek, but he pulled his hand away before she could chastise him again.

“Stop looking at me like that, Clarence,” she asked, rolling her eyes at him. “I’m gonna start thinking you’re the cuddling type.”

“You’re the one who’s still in my bed,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, well… don’t get too excited.” She groaned and rolled over. “I basically chose you over death.”

Castiel smiled while she couldn’t see him. Yes, he had deduced as much, but her honesty was still as sharp as a blade. However, he wouldn’t have preferred it any other way. It meant he hadn’t been wrong about her. It meant that despite what she was, or maybe because of what she was, she would do everything in her power to show him what not giving up looked like.

And she had been right. This was a perfectly fine way to stop thinking about the pain. Maybe the best he’d tried so far.

“I was kidding about the cuddling,” she complained when he lassoed an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. She struggled to get away, but not with enough strength to actually succeed. “Castiel, seriously…”

Castiel left a soft peck on her shoulder before he whispered in her ear:

“I want you again.”

Meg relaxed, because lust was far easier to understand than any display of actual affection. They both knew that wasn’t the reason they were doing this after all. She lowered her hand to his dick and lazily stroke it for him.

“Very well. Let’s see if you do better this time, Clarence.”


End file.
